To operate, a mobile station needs a power source and, in most cases, this power source is a battery. For instance, cellular phones use various types of batteries to operate. The amount of time a mobile station can typically operate before the power of the battery is consumed (i.e., the battery life) is often an important criteria that consumers use in choosing one brand or type of mobile station over another brand or type of mobile station.
The standby battery life of a mobile station is often unpredictable and may be affected by a variety of factors. For instance, a majority of the energy of the battery is often drained during a relatively small percentage of time, for instance, during periods when the mobile station experiences poor Radio Frequency (RF) operating conditions. Typically, the mobile station wakes up periodically, and checks to see if there is an incoming page message. In these situations, this drain rate may be five times higher than the normal drain rate for the battery. This can occur because the amount of time required to decode the incoming page message is much longer if the mobile is experiencing poor signal strength. Consequently, poor RF operating environments typically shorten the battery life dramatically.
Additionally, poor RF operating environments can cause the user to be surprised and/or frustrated when the battery runs out much more quickly than would typically be expected by the user. Thus, a variation of the battery life is also undesirable from the user perspective.
Battery life is also affected by operating processes, such as in audio environments. For example, some previous systems attempted to increase capacity by lengthening the play-out time of play-out buffers during busy hours. Other previous systems accumulated more audio data in the play-out buffers before initiating the audio play-out at a target mobile station. This extended operating time requires more battery capacity.
Other previous systems used streaming services, which adapted to poor RF conditions or heavy system loading by using degraded Quality-of-Service (QoS) and, therefore, a longer play-out buffer. In this way, these services sometimes reduced the amount of Radio Frequency (RF) and network resources being used during peak loading. Under these approaches, the mobile typically waited a longer period of time to accumulate audio before beginning audio play out to the target. Consequently, these systems that utilized streaming services with QoS that was selectively degraded during busy hour/poor RF conditions, resulted in unnecessarily poor standby battery life. In other previous approaches such as in High Rate Packet Data(HRPD) systems and other systems using incremental redundancy (IR) on the paging channel (PCH), the mobile station must wait and combine more messages before going to sleep thereby depleting the battery. Unfortunately, user frustration with the previous systems occurred as calls were dropped or could not even be initiated due to a depleted battery. Moreover, these approaches resulted in battery life that was unsatisfactory for given user delay requirements.
What is needed is a mobile which can use degraded QoS and use a longer play out buffer by using a longer paging interval so that more audio would accumulate in the speaker or network before the target is placed on traffic channel. In these cases, the accumulated audio can be rapidly downloaded to the target and then the degraded QoS may be used for the target.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. It will also be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions with respect to their corresponding respective areas of inquiry and study except where specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.